[5720] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: FAQ HTML
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Henning Schulzrinne)
Tue Sep 20 08:27:30 1994
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 08:37:51 +0200
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: schulzrinne@fokus.gmd.de
From: Henning Schulzrinne <schulzrinne@fokus.gmd.de>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
I tried various permutations of this for the MBONE FAQ. My current
favorite:
- write in LaTeX; generates best hardcopy output, provides table of
contents, citations, and the like. Expresses content at a higher
level than HTML. Write in "basic" LaTeX (section, simple emphasis
changes, trivial tables, plus verbatim/itemize/description/enumerate).
Use html.sty from latex2html for links.
- if desired, convert to PostScript using dvips
- convert to HTML using latex2html.
- convert to nroff/ms using l2x (a simple LaTeX-to-anything translator
that I wrote, based on Tcl) and then easily to ASCII, either
flush-right or typewriter-style
This approach handles (very simple) tables reasonably well. It gives
flexibility in handling things like htmladdnormallink{} in the ASCII
versions.
Dvi-to-ASCII (dvi2tty) seems to always require hand-editing to eliminate
strange spacing, missing spaces and other oddities, but it may do the
trick.
I have found none of the ASCII modes (lynx or others) of HTML tools
satisfactory. First, the emphasis can be rather loud (lots of stars,
underlines, etc.). Mosaic output depends on the screen width and is
hard to automate. Link handling is unsatisfactory (link names are dropped
altogether or put at end or some such). For FAQ that usually contain
lots of pointers to FTP sites and such, link handling is crucial.
--
Henning Schulzrinne email: hgs@fokus.gmd.de
GMD-Fokus phone: +49 30 25499 219
Hardenbergplatz 2 fax: +49 30 25499 202
D-10623 Berlin hphone: +49 117 432 4741
